VIDEO: Mindfulness Meditation and Stress Reduction

In her interview with PsychAlive Senior Editor Lisa Firestone, Dr. Donna Rockwell talks about the powerful impact mindfulness meditation has on stress reduction.

You know, so much of this is really physiology and biology in that we have the sympathetic nervous system and we have the parasympathetic nervous system, which produces cortisol and the fight or flight response and we needed that when we were in the jungle and the lion’s bearing down on us. But unfortunately, we behave that way in traffic, when the light won’t turn green fast enough. So, as we know, people are dying from cardiovascular disease, strokes, heart attacks. We’re killing ourselves due to stress.

So what mindfulness really is, is stress reduction. And, what I was talking about before was the sympathetic nervous system. That’s what produces the cortisol. And then there’s the parasympathetic nervous system, which produces DHEA and all the good hormones that give us a flood feeling of peace and tranquility and all that’s right.

So what meditation really does is it helps us stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system versus the sympathetic nervous system. So we’re more in a state of healthfulness all the time. And not in a state of stress. Because stress is what’s killing America. And it’s not getting any better. We’re in a bigger rat race. And we need more, more, more, more and better and it’s just killing us.

So this is the antidote to that, I think. It’s what I discovered and I was your Type A Washington journalist, running around like a nut job, you know. And this really woke me up to how else I could be. And how much more efficient we can be no matter we’re doing, if we’re more mindful.